On Friday, April 4, MC offered a new way for prospective students to experience what the campus has to offer, “Indecision Day.”
Indecision Day was designed for prospective students who are unsure about what area of study they want to focus on during their collegiate career. It combined a typical campus visit with career testing and a department fair that showcased the different areas of study available at MC.
Indecision Day was largely conceived of and promoted by senior Tish Bitner. Bitner, who formerly worked within the admissions department, is a psychology major who now has an internship with the career services department.
She came up with the idea along with Rusty Coulter-Kern, a faculty member in the psychology department. “The idea for Indecision Day made a lot of sense for me,” Bitner said. “It is a program that brings together my experience in admissions with my work in career services and within my major.”
The first activity of the day was SDS, a “self-directed search” examination that is an abbreviated version of what career services offers to currently enrolled students. The prospective students also completed values sheets.
Concurrent activities were offered to the parents of the prospective students. Parents could attend either a workshop on how to support a child who is undecided, a panel discussion that offered parents a chance to ask questions to representatives of different college departments (such as security, residential life and athletics), or a session led by Leonard Williams on collegiate academics.
The benefit of separating the parents and their children at this point was that it provided the students with a situation in which they could explore and think on their own, at their own pace.
After the testing, students and their parents took a tour of campus and had lunch, during which conversations with athletic coaches were an option for interested persons.
The afternoon began with individual feedback sessions between the prospective students and current psychology students before taking part in a group activity designed to help them learn more regarding how their profiles from the student directed testing apply to them at this point in their education.
The last major activity of Indecision Day was the department fair. At the fair, there were student representatives from most of MC’s academic departments.
Prospective students were able to move around the room at will, asking questions of the current MC students and gathering pamphlets and information.
Parents were also present, and of course were likewise able to ask questions of the current MC students.
The MC students were all majoring in the area of study that they were representing. “We presented the idea at a department chair meeting and to staff members,” Bitner said. “All of the students who presented at the fair were nominated in some form by either staff or faculty members.”
The feedback that has been received so far has all been positive. “One prospective student said that it was the best visit day he had been on,” Bitner said, “because he left having learned more than just basic information about the school.”
Bitner also emphasized that the benefits of Indecision Day extended beyond those offered to prospective students. “Admissions was able to provide an experience that will help them get students to attend MC,” she said. “Furthermore, the psychology students who participated were given a chance to actually practice some degree of counseling, rather than just discussing the issues with their peers.”
Although there are plans to have more Indecision Days in the future, the date is not yet set for the next one. “We are discussing the merits of holding it in the fall or winter,” Bitner said. “This would hopefully allow us to get more prospective students to participate, but it would also help the high school students as well.
Not only would they have more time for gathering information; it could also help bring them to an earlier acceptance of their indecisiveness at such an early point in their college career.”
(this article appeared in the April 11 edition of the Oak Leaves)
No comments:
Post a Comment